Hot Tips and Tactics – The ‘Nitty Gritty’

Sometimes note taking doesn’t lend itself to long winded paragraphs. Sometimes notes are best served as bullet points and here are some good ones. Below you will find the no-nonsense ‘nitty gritty’ notes on universal search optimization taken directly from this years SES NY session. Just the facts, nothing but the facts - Enjoy!

Optimizing press releases and media relations for news results

Press release optimization for news search engines is 5-step process

Conduct keyword research to find two to three relevant search terms

Make sure release includes terms in headline and lead paragraph

Add links intended to help people find interesting, related content

Use one of the leading press release distribution services

Measure results of a campaign in PR outputs and business outcomes

Conduct keyword research to find two to three relevant search terms

Think about words users would type to find your news

More than half of search terms are 3 or more words long, so use longer phrases

They often convert at higher rates

What about my brand?

Unless your brand already well-known, don’t use it as a search term

Instead, use a search term for your product category or customer benefit

Make sure release includes terms in headline and lead paragraph

News search engines scan the title, headline and at least the first 100 words of news articles

So, make sure your press release actually includes your keywords in the headline and first few sentences

Add links intended to help people find interesting, related content

“I’m not against doing press releases; press releases can be a useful part of getting traffic and building a brand."

“For ranking in Google, however, the main benefit of a press release is not direct links or PageRank from the press release directly; it’s primarily the people who decide to write an article and link because of that.”

World of news search SEO larger than press release optimization

News search SEO should include media relations focused on the top 20 general news sites in the U.K.

News search SEO should also include blog outreach focused on group blogs that are Google News sources

93.9 million unique visitors a month visit general news sites in the U.S.

You should continue to optimize your press releases for the major news search engines

But, you should also focus your media relations efforts on the other top 20 general news sites

Source: comScore World Metrix, Dec. 2007
From Google News, users head downstream to a variety of sites

Google News drives traffic to several other Google sites

Google

Google Image Search

Some news sites and wire services “punch above their weight”

New York Times

Reuters

Source: Hitwise, Jan. 19, 2008
90% of journalists say that visuals are important to their stories

41% of the journalists surveyed said that visuals could dictate their content

“A release e-mailed with a jpg or tif file has a much better chance of making it into our newspaper,” said one editor

Google analyzes the text on the page adjacent to the image, the image caption and dozens of other factors to determine the image content.
Google also uses sophisticated algorithms to remove duplicates and ensure that the highest quality images are presented first in your results.
http://www.google.com/help/faq_images.html

Images – How Google Wants Images Identified

Use the alt attribute to provide descriptive text. In addition, we recommend using a human-readable caption and descriptive text around the image.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66353

First, Optimize Your Site’s Images by giving the images meaningful names such as pineapple.jpg and not 0156a.jpg

Here's an Example of Optimized File Name Combined with ALT Text (Use ALT text and add keywords in Photoshop during creation):

Use ALT Tag to Convey Message

No ALTs on decorative elements

Instead of “dog pushing cart,” there is the call to action conveyed by the dog pushing the Cart

Online Photo Galleries

Photosharing

23

AOL Pictures

Care2 Connect

dotPhoto

Faces

Flickr – owned by Yahoo!

Fotki

KodakEasyShareGallery

MyPhotoAlbum

Picasa – owned by Google

PBase.com

Photobucket.com

PhotoSite

PictureTrail

Pixagogo

Ringo

SmugMug

Webshots

Zoto

Optimization
This is how it should be done:

Title – Keyword-rich

Caption -- Meaningful

Tags – Use like keywords Links

To other photos

To other sources

Anchor text – Use it to help define Keywords in Caption and Title should be reflected in the tags

Optimizing pages and submitting listings for local business results

143 million searches a month on Google Maps from within the U.S.
Source: comScore qSearch, Dec. 2007

Use the Local Business Center to create free listing on Google Maps

Use the Local Business Center to edit your listing whenever you like

Your Google account gives you access to Local Business Center

You can create separate listings for each of your business locations

Google business listing description is limited to 200 characters max

Choose up to five categories or sub-categories for your business

Specify when you are open and what types of payment you accept

Add up to 10 photos, images, diagrams, illustrations or logos

Fill in other details customers may want to know about your business

Let Google know how you would like to validate your business listing

Majority of online product research leads to offline conversions

In 2007, a survey from Accenture reported that 58% of respondents said they locate items online before going to a store to purchase

The Kelsey Group’s research indicates that with purchases of more than $500, where the Internet is the starting point, more than 90% of the transactions finish offline

Source: Kelsey Group Blogs, May 11, 2007
You can create coupons for any active listing you have submitted

Coupons can include an expiration date, an offer code, and other related information

If you have multiple businesses or business locations, you can create coupons associated with any or all of them

Google’s My Maps feature lets you create your own custom Maps

You can add placemarks, draw lines and shapes, and embed text, photos and videos.

Your map automatically gets a public URL, or you can publish your map for inclusion in Google Maps search results.

Credits for these notes and for an excellent session on Universal Search are due to Greg Jarboe Search Engine Optimization Public Relations, and Amanda Watlington, Search for Profit. Not enough can be said about how informative this session was and how appreciative the search world is to their efforts.

Dante Monteverde, Website Magazine Contributor is a Search Strategist specializing in Search Engine Optimization. He founded SpiderBait.com in 1996 and has over 10 years of SEO experience. Visit SpiderBait's SEO Expert blog: www.spiderbait.com/seo-expert for more useful resources on a variety of search topics.